/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19672388]

Just read this book and thought it was pretty good. Thoughts on this book?

[Anonymous No.19672447]

>>19672388
I just read it the other week myself. It's an exceptionally good novel if you can get past the horns and tails, probably the only work of fantasy that really resembles much of the source material of the modern genre, such as the more fantastic Icelandic sagas, the Matters of France and Britain, and the historical plays of Shakespeare. The ending is incredible, narratively perfect in that way where it feels inevitable, necessary.

People generally seem to get filtered by the country names and the language, though.

[Anonymous No.19673576]

>>19672388
An extraordinarily good book, great prose, memorable characters, a perfect thematic whole
I have reread it several times, all acquaintance with Elizabethan and Jacobean greatly improves the experience as you realize the sources he is quoting from
It is a shame that this did not become the foundation of fantasy literature instead of Tolkien

[Anonymous No.19673600]

>>19673576
why pit these two great authors against each other? They are both genius.

[Anonymous No.19673665]

>>19673600
They knew each other; Eddison supposedly read and commented drafts of LotR, and Tolkien complained about the Worm because its philosophy was "unpleasant".

That being said the reason to pit them against each other is obviously that they're very different works, with different attitudes, ideals and sources. Tolkien's stance is fundamentally a whiny melancholy, lamenting a lost golden age, whereas Eddison is full of vigor and praise for deeds of arms (this is what Tolkien found unpleasant about it, WWI traumatized him into pacifism and whining). It's not just Eddison's prose that's Elizabethan, but his whole attitude: writers of that era like Brantome, and of course the typical nobles of the time, didn't see battles and single combat as awful catastrophes but valorized them. Someone like Bayard or the Grand Condé would have understood Juss' grief at knowing he will never again have the opportunity to fight a great combat, to rival the one he fought under Carcë walls, back to back with Brandoch Daha. It's fundamentally a much more wholesome attitude than bawwing about being too damaged to ever return to the Shire.

[Anonymous No.19673666]

>>19672447
You sound like a goodreads reviewer.

[Anonymous No.19673668]

>>19673665
>It's fundamentally a much more wholesome attitude than bawwing about being too damaged to ever return to the Shire.
...and that's why it's a shame that Eddison didn't become the bedrock of subsequent fantasy in Tolkien's place, sorry, hit Post too soon.

[Anonymous No.19673681]

>>19673668
Ok, I take it back. I didn't realize the extent as to how opposed the two works are. I love both works for their different perspectives, but I slightly prefer LOTR. Thanks for explaining to me, anon.

[Anonymous No.19673745]

>>19673681
>Thanks for explaining to me, anon.
Glad if I could help it make sense, friend Anon.

[Anonymous No.19673793]

>>19673668
Tolkiens books are subtle subversion promoted by Anglokike elites. Just think about it: they glorify (((elves))), greedy dwarves and weakling homos, making them into heroes, at the same time villanizing humans as vain, stupid, greedy and quarrelsome. Then there is also a secret society of wizards - shadowy inhuman characters pulling strings behind the thrones to avoid accountability, but no one minds it because they are outspoken and have stylish beards. Basically the NWO message for the colonized people: be docile, obey aristocracy, and let wizards think for you.

[Anonymous No.19673945]

>>19673665
>Tolkien's stance is fundamentally a whiny melancholy, lamenting a lost golden age, whereas Eddison is full of vigor and praise for deeds of arms (this is what Tolkien found unpleasant about it, WWI traumatized him into pacifism and whining). It's not just Eddison's prose that's Elizabethan, but his whole attitude: writers of that era like Brantome, and of course the typical nobles of the time, didn't see battles and single combat as awful catastrophes but valorized them.


This would be ok with Eddison ever saw combat, but he didn't, so now he just sounds like a LARPing mall ninja while Tolkien was the real deal.

[Anonymous No.19674587]

>>19673945
Eddison's attitude is that of Elizabethans who saw combat (as well as earlier generations). Tolkien didn't really see combat either, he just saw mustard gas in the trenches. He got invalided out by being bitten by lice and contracting a fever.

Also,
>Tolkien's relatives were shocked when he elected not to volunteer immediately for the British Army. In a 1941 letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recalled: "In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly. It was a nasty cleft to be in for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage."

>Tolkien complained: "Gentlemen are rare among the superiors, and even human beings rare indeed."

He basically knew himself that he was a faggot, unfit for battle. Eddison's Lessingham, as he's developed in the Zimiamvia trilogy (the sequels to the Worm), in in contrast a man who knows he *is* fit for battle in a world where there isn't any real fighting left, and is stuck with frustration until he dies and passes to a better one.

[Anonymous No.19674620]

>>19673668
The Worm inspired a lot more pulp and a different branch of literary epic. I think it's going to come back into fashion with the next generation of fantasy writers tired of the game of tolkien telephone that has dominated fantasy for half a century.

[Anonymous No.19675222]

>>19673665
>being enthusiastic about trench warfare in a sea of mud, and poison gas
the fuck?

[Anonymous No.19675255]

>>19675222
Are you retarded? The point is that WWI was just shitty industrial slaughter, not combat as countless generations of our ancestors have known it. Artillery fucked everything up, let alone machine guns and the gas.

[Anonymous No.19675308]

>>19675255
question still stands why france & england (who had a protection pact with poland) only declared war on germany but not on the soviet union

[Anonymous No.19675806]

>>19673665
Good post - I would like to add that Eddison is very self consciously literary, referencing quoting and being influenced by canonical authors, and privileging the moment-to-moment aesthetic experience even at the cost of a consistent setting - meanwhile Tolkien is hyperfocused on his setting and the consistency of its internal systems
But I have never heard anyone mention Brantome, how does he stand among the renaissance writers

[Anonymous No.19675949]

>>19675806
>Eddison is very self consciously literary, referencing quoting and being influenced by canonical authors, and privileging the moment-to-moment aesthetic experience even at the cost of a consistent setting
Yes, this is very true, going as far as borrowing (and meticulously referencing, in the appendix) period poetry instead of attempting to write his own – and yet he ends up with a highly cohesive, narratively tight work.

>I have never heard anyone mention Brantome, how does he stand among the renaissance writers
Brantome was a courtier of the Valois French court, later a diarist or memoirist covering roughly the latter half of the 16th century, full of good anecdotes, peculiarly unjudgmental by latter standards, and along with Pierre de l'Estoile, Vital d'Audigier and one or two others is a main source on military and dueling customs and anecdotes of the 16th century. Hard to find in English as out of his works only Famous Women and Gallant Ladies received proper translations in the modern era, although there's a sort of snidely mst3k-ed late-Victorian or Edwardian translation of the Discourse on Dueling which is worth reading in spite of the translator's moralizing, "witty" commentary. Other than that you're left to the original French or very scarce, costly originals of never-reprinted 17th-century translations.

[Anonymous No.19676076]

>bawwing about being too damaged to ever return to the Shire.
But it was The Ring that did that damage, not the fighting. Tolkien’s average fighters do take the fighting well mentally. Even the Hobbits take to it in the end, don’t they?

>Just think about it: they glorify (((elves))), greedy dwarves and weakling homos, making them into heroes, at the same time villanizing humans as vain, stupid, greedy and quarrelsome.
The point is rather the opposite, isn’t it? Elves and dwarves at best are net neutral. They don’t at all rise up to confront evil. They are content to keep to their own affairs; it borders on the decadent.
Meanwhile it is mankind, although flawed and quarrelsome, that takes up arms and fights valiantly. That is why the Age of Man is coming to Middle Earth.
While in the real world, the age of the soldier and the worker was coming to planet earth. The elves might be thought of as the nobles. Their concept of war has indeed gone extinct with the rise of trenches and machine-guns. I feel Tolkien does not pass judgement on this. If anything, the reader wishes for the elves to not go away.